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A review by unsympathizer
An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America by Joseph Bottum
3.0
The first half of the book contains some of the best sociological analysis of the way contemporary American culture is, whether one likes it or not, shaped by mainline Protestantism and its decline. Social justice, as Bottum points out, is merely a secularized version of the Social Gospel movement of fin de siecle America. He writes that we are in "an anxious age" as we desperately search for meaning in a time of declining faith in deities. Bottum walks the reader through the development of the Social Gospel and how it reflects through people we see today, and he makes up "poster children" that serve as its archetypes, although he makes them up and then disappointingly puts them aside very quickly.
The second half, on the other hand, is a history of American Catholicism that is rather sloppily done. Bottum notes at the end that this book is spliced together from various essays he wrote for other magazines, and it's clear in the Catholic part, as many chapters are incongruent with the others. This book is worth reading just for the first half though, one can skip the second half unless one wants to hear about how Catholic intellectualism developed in Cold War America. There's also not a lot of discussion on Catholicism vs. liberalism.
Bottum also doesn't talk about a few things, namely the role Evangelicalism played after the fall of the mainline, instead choosing to claim that Catholicism filled that role. There's little mention of Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, and other religions that may fully illustrate the American religious tapestry. Also, Bottum writes about how younger people are more pro-life, which was quite naive, as the exact opposite has been shown post-Dobbs. All in all, the first half of the book is required reading for any budding sociologist of American culture.
The second half, on the other hand, is a history of American Catholicism that is rather sloppily done. Bottum notes at the end that this book is spliced together from various essays he wrote for other magazines, and it's clear in the Catholic part, as many chapters are incongruent with the others. This book is worth reading just for the first half though, one can skip the second half unless one wants to hear about how Catholic intellectualism developed in Cold War America. There's also not a lot of discussion on Catholicism vs. liberalism.
Bottum also doesn't talk about a few things, namely the role Evangelicalism played after the fall of the mainline, instead choosing to claim that Catholicism filled that role. There's little mention of Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, and other religions that may fully illustrate the American religious tapestry. Also, Bottum writes about how younger people are more pro-life, which was quite naive, as the exact opposite has been shown post-Dobbs. All in all, the first half of the book is required reading for any budding sociologist of American culture.